h a rollicking, happy
youthful voice crying out, as the owner of it stood up and touched an
upright forefinger to his numbered cap, in jolly mimicry of the
Hanson cabman of other days: "Keb, sir? Keb, mum? Keb! Keb!" and
hard on the heels of that flung out a laughing, "Hullo, mater?
Hullo, dad? you dear old Thunder Box! I say! 'How does this sort
of thing get you?' as Katie Eastman says. Buttons all over me,
like a blooming Bobby! What?"

And it needed no more than that to assure Cleek and Mr. Narkom
that in the bright-eyed, bonny-faced, laughing young fellow who
jumped down from the driver's seat at this, and stood up straight
and strong, and displayed his taxicabman's livery unabashed and
unashamed, they were looking upon Sir Mawson Leake's eldest son
and--heir!

"Henry!" The voice was Lady Leake's, and there was pain and surprise
and joy and terror all jumbled up in it curiously, as she ran to him.
"Henry! Is it really _you?_"

"'Sure thing!'--to quote Katie again. Just took a spin over to
show myself off. Plenty of brass trimmings! What? I thought, dad,
you'd like to be sure that I really am done with the clubs at last.
Not because they blacklisted me--for they didn't--but because--oh
well, _you_ know. No taxicabmen need apply--that sort of thing.
I'll be invited to resign from every blessed one of them to-morrow,
and there's not a chap connected with any one of 'em who'd be seen
taking a match from me to light his cigarette with after this.
All the same, though, I go out of them with a clean slate, and
that's all I cared about. I did get that two hundred after all,
pater. Curzon and Katie raised it for me between them--out of their
own private accounts, you know--and as driving a car is the only
thing I really do understand, I'm earning the money to pay them back
this way."

"That's the stuff, by Jupiter! That's the stuff!" rapped out Cleek,
impulsively. "You ought to have known from the first, Sir Mawson,
that they don't make thieves of this sort of material?"

"Thieves? What do you mean by thieves? And who the dickens are you,
anyway? I say, dad, who's this johnnie? What's he driving at? What
does he mean by talking about thieves?"

"The necklace--the Ranee's necklace! The Ladder of Light!" bleated
Sir Mawson feebly. "It is gone! It is lost! It went when _you_ went.
There has been no trace of it since." Then he joined Lady Leake, and
plucked at the boy's sleeve, and between them out came the whole
miser